The Bible/Heartwarming

The Old Testament

• The end of the Deluge. God has just wiped out all of humanity with a huge flood save for Noah and his family. After the flood ends, God makes a promise to never unleash such destruction again. To symbolize that promise, God creates the first rainbow.
• The almost-sacrifice of Isaac. God had promised Abraham a son. Then, out of the blue, God demands that he sacrifice that son. But just when Abraham is about to do it, God stops him, saying it was a Secret Test of Character, and provides a ram to sacrifice instead.
• Jacob and Esau's reunion. Jacob had fled from Esau because the latter hated him for stealing his blessing. Many years later, Jacob returns to Canaan. When he hears Esau is coming to meet him, Jacob is terrified. His fear turns out to be unjustified, as Esau greets his brother with open arms.
• Similarly, there's the reunion between Jacob's son Joseph and his brothers. Joseph's brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt. Through a series of events, Joseph rises to a position of power and helps Egypt prepare for a famine. When thea famine strikes both Egypt and Canaan, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt, where Joseph has helped store food. When Joseph and his brothers first meet, they don't recognize him. When they realize who he is, they are afraid he might use his position of power to get revenge on them for selling him into slavery. Joseph, however, assures them he has forgiven them, saying that what they intended for bad, God had used for good.
  • Judah, pleading for Benjamin, and offering himself in Benjamin's place. He knew what Benjamin meant to Jacob, and he himself had been through double the sorrow he and the others had put Jacob through. He knew that if anything happened to Benjamin Jacob might never recover.
• Jeremiah 30-33. Most of the book of Jeremiah is concerned with the apostasy of the Hebrews and the consequent judgment from God. Chapters 30-33, on the other hand, foretell the future restoration of Israel. To illustrate his point, Jeremiah buys a field from his cousin while the Chaldeans are besieging Jerusalem. The passages are often understood to have a triple meaning-the return of the Jews to the region of the old kingdom of Judah in 538 BC, the founding of the present-day State of Israel in 1948, and the final reconciliation of Israel to God in the last days.
• At the end of 1st Samuel, Saul is the posthumous recipient of this from the men of Jabesh-Gilead, who repaid the debt they owed Saul for saving them early on in his reign by recovering his body and that of his sons from where the Philistines defiled them and made sure they were given an honorable burial.
• David had a series of these early in his career as king.
  • At the beginning of 2nd Samuel, a messenger appeared, bringing him news of King Saul's death on the battlefield. David asks how he knows this, and the messenger admits he's from the Amalekite tribe and that he killed Saul by his own request since he was dying on the field of battle anyway^[1], and expected a reward for telling David, who had refused from ever laying a hand on the man who had always tried to kill him since he was the Lord's anointed, that Saul was dead. Needless to say, David gave him an appropriate reward for his alleged crime.
    • And the next chapter is CMOH in prayer form, delivered by David in Saul and his son Johnathan's memory.
  • Shortly after David became king, his former commander Abner decided to put the Ish-Bosheth son of the late King Saul on the throne and opposed David's rule of the lands of Israel, essentially being the Hypercompetent Sidekick who kept David from running the whole land. Later, after the two had a falling out, Abner decided to Heel Face Turn and planned to give David the rest of Israel on a platter in good faith. The deal went south because David's own Hypercompetent Sidekick Joab decided to murder Abner as revenge for Abner killing his brother even though Abner only killed the guy in a clear case of self-defense, even giving the guy more than one chance to walk away. When David heard of this, he declared a state funeral for one of his former enemies, honoring him as "a prince and great man".
  • Later, two guys murder Ish-Bosheth in his own bed and decide to bring his head back to David, hoping for a reward. What they get, slightly before David has them killed on the spot, is David calling them scum for killing an innocent man in cold blood.
    • And not long after David is the undisputed master of all Israel, he finds out Saul still has a relative whom he can show kindness to, in honor of Johnathan's memory. He summons the relative, Mephibosheth, who deems himself unworthy of David's favor, and tells him that not only will he never not be provided for, explicitly willing Saul's estate to him and making sure the lands will be cared for, he also tells Mephibosheth, who is a cripple who cannot fend for himself, that he will will always have a place at his table as if he were one of the king's own sons.
• In the Book of Jonah, God sends Jonah to Nineveh to foretell their destruction due to their living in sin. When the king hears this news, he immediately repents as do the rest of the citizens who put on sackcloth as a sign of their sorriness. God, seeing their Heel Face Turn, decides to spare the city but Jonah is angry and adamant that the city be destroyed. While taking shelter from the heat under a tree, God sends a worm to kill, which depresses him. God then delivers this line to a sulking Jonah: "You cared about a tree which grew overnight and died overnight, and which you did not work to grow. And should I not care about Nineveh, which has thousands of people who do not yet know their right from their left, and also much cattle!" Here the story shifts away from the Old Testament image of a destructive, vengeful God and foretells the image of the patient, forgiving, loving God of the New Testament. Its quite touching in that God shows compassion towards a people other than the Israelites along with the animals in the city. The book is also one of the few books in the Bible that doesn't have anyone die.
• The end of the Book of Job. The title character has suffered a truckload of disasters. His "friends" tell him it's punishment for some sin he committed. Much argument ensues. At the end, God rebukes Job's friends for the way they spoke to him. Job, however, brings an offering on their behalf and God forgives them.
  • To boot, Job himself is generously rewarded for keeping his faith, getting back everything he has lost and more, and living on 140 more years.
• Elijah saving the widow's son.
  • Elijah is on the receiving end of one when God shows up, not in anything spectacular or amazing, but in a still, small voice, to tell him "You Are Not Alone".

Jesus

• "Jesus wept" and the resurrection of Lazarus.
• The resurrection of Jairus' daughter.
• The fate of the "good criminal". He was was crucified next to Jesus, and rebuked a fellow criminal who yelled at Jesus to take all three off their crosses. Jesus then promised the "good criminal" a life in heaven.
• Jesus' saving of the alleged adulteress, and his Sermon on the Mount. Not only that, but when he was on the Cross, he pleaded with God to forgive his murderers. That's pretty forgiving.
• In St. Julian's Revelation of Divine Love Jesus tells her that It has been behooved that sin should exist. But, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. This, by the by, basically recreated the old Christian sect of Universalism.
• "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother."
• "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:13
• "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

The Bible

• The entire purpose of Jesus on Earth. God was willing to sacrifice and forsake his OWN son just so that humanity - who were unworthy of salvation - could be saved.

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1. ↑ the guy was lying about this, but David didn't know this